[I added a paragraph and an extra line or two to her original game sample; hopefully this will suffice!]
Wanda couldn’t say how it happened, but somehow, she’d gone from falling to her knees on the cold stone floor of a crumbling church, screaming in an anguish purer and deadlier than anything she’d ever felt... to wandering about in a daze in what seemed to be a purely unfamiliar land. She must have snapped - it was the only logical explanation - but she would have hoped that her response to what had happened to Pietro would have been a little more on the proactive side. Escaping into her own mind while her brother and her country fell hardly seemed like the most productive thing to do.
While the entire nation of Sokovia had seemed to be falling to pieces beneath her very feet, there was something eerily still about this landscape. It didn’t surprise her, not really; after all, if hiding away in some quiet corner in her head was some sort of defense mechanism, it only made too much sense for her to suddenly be somewhere deathly quiet, not a breeze stirring, colors and sounds seeming muted as though in an attempt not to overwhelm her. She’d just felt Death, and so it was only fitting that the numb feeling of the grave seemed to trail after her as she walked, even the grass appearing to curl up and wither beneath her step.
She was surprised to eventually find a flurry of activity (or would have been, if she didn’t feel so dazed); some festival of sorts, by the looks of it. Still assuming that this was all in her head, some illusion that she’d created for herself to ease the blow of an unthinkable tragedy, she walked among the unfamiliar people, faces but a blur and voices a distant drone. Why she would retreat into herself rather than find Ultron and rip him apart with her bare hands was a mystery, but given how unpredictable her powers could be, perhaps this was simply her mind’s way of keeping her from utterly decimating half the planet.
Eventually, she passed by something that caught her eye: a bushel of sorts, with what looked like some kind of treated paper piled inside. Frowning slightly in her curiosity, she moved towards it and gingerly plucked one from among the others, trying to figure out just what it-
Oh.
There was an image - no, not an image, not quite, almost more like a sensation - of her brother as she remembered him best. Before Ultron, before HYDRA, before the riots in Sokovia had grown so fierce that they’d begun talking about needing to take some sort of effective action beyond mere protests. He used to smile, back then. Laugh, even. And she would laugh with him, teasing him often, and he would take it all in stride because after all, he’d likely teased her first. They would curl up together sometimes, looking at the picture Pietro kept in his wallet, folded and faded but made that much more precious for how fragile it was. She might have come close to forgetting their parents’ voices, but because of that last remaining family picture, she couldn’t forget their faces.
But now that photograph was likely riddled with holes and bloody, just like Pietro, and as she felt the tears streaming down her face, she covered her mouth with her free hand and turned away, wanting to run and scream and wake up from this nightmare. All she could do, though, was sink to the ground besides the bushel of strange paper and continue to stare at another face that was forever lost to her, never to be forgotten. She didn’t even seem to realize that the warm glow of tremendous affection that washed over her was strong enough to veritably radiate off of her in noticeable waves, too caught up in seeing her brother as she’ll never see him again.
Re: Revision
Wanda couldn’t say how it happened, but somehow, she’d gone from falling to her knees on the cold stone floor of a crumbling church, screaming in an anguish purer and deadlier than anything she’d ever felt... to wandering about in a daze in what seemed to be a purely unfamiliar land. She must have snapped - it was the only logical explanation - but she would have hoped that her response to what had happened to Pietro would have been a little more on the proactive side. Escaping into her own mind while her brother and her country fell hardly seemed like the most productive thing to do.
While the entire nation of Sokovia had seemed to be falling to pieces beneath her very feet, there was something eerily still about this landscape. It didn’t surprise her, not really; after all, if hiding away in some quiet corner in her head was some sort of defense mechanism, it only made too much sense for her to suddenly be somewhere deathly quiet, not a breeze stirring, colors and sounds seeming muted as though in an attempt not to overwhelm her. She’d just felt Death, and so it was only fitting that the numb feeling of the grave seemed to trail after her as she walked, even the grass appearing to curl up and wither beneath her step.
She was surprised to eventually find a flurry of activity (or would have been, if she didn’t feel so dazed); some festival of sorts, by the looks of it. Still assuming that this was all in her head, some illusion that she’d created for herself to ease the blow of an unthinkable tragedy, she walked among the unfamiliar people, faces but a blur and voices a distant drone. Why she would retreat into herself rather than find Ultron and rip him apart with her bare hands was a mystery, but given how unpredictable her powers could be, perhaps this was simply her mind’s way of keeping her from utterly decimating half the planet.
Eventually, she passed by something that caught her eye: a bushel of sorts, with what looked like some kind of treated paper piled inside. Frowning slightly in her curiosity, she moved towards it and gingerly plucked one from among the others, trying to figure out just what it-
Oh.
There was an image - no, not an image, not quite, almost more like a sensation - of her brother as she remembered him best. Before Ultron, before HYDRA, before the riots in Sokovia had grown so fierce that they’d begun talking about needing to take some sort of effective action beyond mere protests. He used to smile, back then. Laugh, even. And she would laugh with him, teasing him often, and he would take it all in stride because after all, he’d likely teased her first. They would curl up together sometimes, looking at the picture Pietro kept in his wallet, folded and faded but made that much more precious for how fragile it was. She might have come close to forgetting their parents’ voices, but because of that last remaining family picture, she couldn’t forget their faces.
But now that photograph was likely riddled with holes and bloody, just like Pietro, and as she felt the tears streaming down her face, she covered her mouth with her free hand and turned away, wanting to run and scream and wake up from this nightmare. All she could do, though, was sink to the ground besides the bushel of strange paper and continue to stare at another face that was forever lost to her, never to be forgotten. She didn’t even seem to realize that the warm glow of tremendous affection that washed over her was strong enough to veritably radiate off of her in noticeable waves, too caught up in seeing her brother as she’ll never see him again.